ClanBase, once great and respected league, has come to the end of the road. CB management have put statement out explaining the reasons behind shutting down. Even though CB wasn't so popular lately to a large number of gamers around the world, it was home for many old school games including UT, ET, CoD2, MoH:AA and Quake, and will surely be missed by many.

For those unfamiliar with the name: ClanBase once was a cool site to visit if you were an online gamer. With cups and ladders hosted for games such as the Quake, Unreal Tournament, Counter-Strike and Call of Duty series, a teenager really had quite some options for multiplayer entertainment. Heck, we even had LAN finals for our renowned EuroCups.

Those days are far behind us and as it stands today, the company that owns the ClanBase site - GGL - is unable to cover the costs required to run the website. Moreover, lately the owners of the site do not wish to cooperate with the voluntary crew, keeping everybody in the dark and thus showing complete disrespect to people who spend many hours a day trying to make our tournaments a success.

The website has now been offline for more than three weeks due to an unpaid bill. No action is being taken by the owner to get the website back online. Having no vision for the future, we - the ClanBase Crew - have lost our last hopes about ClanBase ever coming back online, and unfortunately we announce the end of a great era.
The history and the truth as the ClanBase Crew sees it

A US-based company called Global Gaming League (Professional Interactive Entertainment, Inc.) noticed the success of the site and bought it from the original owners in December of 2004. They had financial backing for server hosting and our tournaments. Things were going well until in 2007 CB suffered its first heart attack when GGL couldn’t deliver the prize money they put up for the EuroCup. This can be marked as the start of our downfall.

The CB Crew has always been made up of volunteers with the majority being just teenagers. There was no possibility for us to come up with the money on our own that was promised, yet we were always the ones getting blamed. After all, it was our cup season and our name. It is no surprise that after this blow there was no way for us to host another season with the promise of any kind of prize until the debt was settled with the previous winners.

To this day, GGL owes around €24,000 in prize money which will never be settled. The other sites who were in the same gaming business of course had no problems hosting their tournaments however they wanted. ClanBase, however, lost a great deal of its reputation along with some top teams who never got their winnings.

As time went by the site also started to decay. After the takeover we had paid developers who tried to put the code in shape. There were some noteworthy developments such as the seasonal and invitational ladders, but after the first test run we couldn’t get the necessary changes implemented - because GGL stopped paying the developers.

Money. The source of all evil.

GGL started moving the servers between hosts (RackSpace, Amazon, GreenQloud) to save costs, and to avoid further missed payments. This appeared in the news a few times when providers came out with how they were lied to. We also lost the ability to upload files anything other than demos. Fortunately, a Crew member had the means to help out.

Funding continued to dry up. After the first wave of cuts where we lost the two developers and a head admin, things cooled down for a while. Recently, a general system administrator was cut off which got interesting at one point when CB suffered a denial of service attack to which the host (GreenQloud) responded with moving the servers to a different IP address. However, the domain name had to be updated as well to point to the new address. Since our sysadmin was not getting paid, he refused to perform this, essentially holding the site hostage for a while.

So how do we get money? The site had ads for a while which obviously was not enough. We may have been naive thinking that upping the quality of the site would be a good move, which was promised more times we bother to count. GGL thought otherwise. In fact, many of the cool features our gamers would have loved to see on the website were never implemented - because “CBv2” was supposedly just around the corner.

Their first bold move was trying to get adult banners on CB - a website that was home for thousands of teenagers. The Crew was shocked and appalled by this. Fortunately, we managed to get our voice through (by threatening to go on strike) - but we also lost several valuable crew members who had enough of the poor conditions and bad decision making.

Next to adult material, gambling can also be a good source of income. The Poker and Betting ladders were introduced. It is doubtful that much money was ever made of this, at least nobody said otherwise. The only thing certain is that these projects never got off the ground.

A poor attempt was also made to gather money in the form of offering VIP membership. Nobody took this very seriously and as expected, nobody bothered to opt in after a while. The only benefit to having VIP was the ability to get rid of some of the ads. Perhaps a regular donation system would’ve been more useful.

By the end of August 2013, yet another problem surfaced: the money ran out for the hosting. This is when CB started to go down every month when the time came to pay for the next 30 days.

Of course we tried contacting GGL through our manager who was in charge of handling communications. As you may have guessed by now, he also failed to receive his payment for a while and a company owing money to you, and who knows how many others, is not in a hurry to get back to you.

The ClanBase management tried to directly contact the GGL founder and president Ted Owen (since everyone else left), with very little success. Whenever we got a response it usually consisted of no more than a few words.

The last we heard from him, he stated that “GGL will move on without ClanBase, and besides, why did the Crew never put any money in it?”

Mr. Owen, the Crew put time in it. A lot of time... for free. Every day. And to clarify, nobody has ever reached out to us to ask for any kind of financial aid. Not that we would’ve ever agreed to anything if the money had to go through GGL as that would’ve resulted in the money never reaching its intended destination.

Ultimately, we understand that our users would have expected us to come out with the truth sooner. It has taken us three weeks to make a public statement - but the only reason it took so long is that we were trying to not lose the hope and to reach out to mr. Owen. Unfortunately, our last request (or offer) to him - to release the ClanBase site to the crew for us to be able to continue running it on our own, without the GGL - was not welcomed.

It is thus our sad duty to inform you that ClanBase is gone. We would like to sincerely thank over a thousand admins working on the website over the past 15 years of ClanBase’s existence. And an even bigger thanks goes out to all the players who supported us over the years and who did not lose faith no matter what.

This writing has not come easily because ClanBase has been a big part of our lives, and we definitely did not want to see it end like this.
Thank you,
ClanBase

I haven't been on this site in...years and years. And I haven't worked for the GGL in even longer (I was one of the original developers who worked at the GGL).

And I feel awful reading this.

I even feel a bit to blame. I loved watching the EuroCup Q3 TDM games back in the day. You guys were the best and the structure of the league and the entertainment value of watching those games was so great that we had to talk about it. And so when it came to look for things to get involved with in europe...obviously Clanbase was thought of.

And we all know where that's lead.

On a personal note, don't believe a WORD that Ted Owen has to say. He lied to everyone (investors, friends, employees...), the GGL owes not just the prize money mentioned above, but also to employees who never got paid. He is a scumbag.

I'm sorry for any part I had in it and I know that all the people who ever worked there feel much the same.

Clanbase was the best for its time. The admins and cb crew deserve a huge amount of respect. So many volunteers have given up their free time to make leagues happen. How many players have benefited from this?

thoroughly enjoyed the ET/RtCW tournaments I played on CB over the years. huge respect to those chiefs & volunteers who managed to do a good job adminning with such a lack of support in the more recent seasons. beyond sad to see you go. :(

I'm sorry to see clanbase go. Always enjoyed being admin and more in the crew.

However even though esdf in fact is a dick he's right about something. Clanbase caused it's own downfall. The regulations are simply mongoloid and caused me to stop hosting cups after years and years of doing it.

I'm pretty sure that the CB praise doesn't derive from user-friendly site navigation.

It was "ok" once you got used to it or used the website a lot, but otherwise you were going in circles, kept wondering how the hell did you end up in a section and the huge background was actually an advertisement/link.

Just joined the adminteam this season but still was fun even if the system didnt left u with much options for changes but still, the ppl i know from the team are 2 good! Hope we can celebrate the Div 1 4v4 CTF final on sunday as the worthy end it will be!

Bingo, using GGL as a scapegoat is funny expecting them to operate at losses just so people can keep memories around. If they want the name pay for it pony up the dough since they seem to want other people to funnel cash into a dead end venture. GGL paid money for the rights to every thing clanbase they own it if you want it back buy it back, hard to believe they'd ask much for something that was a total loss. Also if the volunteers feel ClanBase reputation was tarnished why would you want it back any way? Start a new league if GGL was the only thing holding you back. If you just want nostalgia unfortunately you shouldn't have sold "valuable memories" in the first place.

Sorry didn't mean to sound so negative toward volunteers, volunteers in quake community are great and keep things going, but all the volunteer work doesn't always generate dollars its not something you can expect a business to keep putting money into, maybe GGL could have been more open with the business model and allowed more input but in the end its their name and money on the line. Face It has obviously found a working business model but it seems pretty secretive other than we have "investors". I doubt GGL had the resources to drastically change the business model to try following Face It model of high quality production.

GGL put a lot of money into quake maybe to a fault so much so that it was probably their undoing.

I think they (GGL) actually had a huge opportunity when they acquired ClanBase and they completely ruined it.

When ClanBase was in their glory times it was a huge site with a lot of social interaction (read: flamewars).When social media was emerging they somehow managed to fail growing towards a grown up social network with gamers, games, competitions and a lot more.

I think GGL's involvement was a lot about the events and paid tournaments, but that is really of secondary importance for 90% of all people involved with clanbase as a gamer I think.

No other site has managed to completely fill up that gap that CB has already left behind for years.

GGL bothered me when they underwent a site revamp and decided to completely delete UT2K4 demos from Digital Life, etc. It was like nobody cared about what they were doing or the people involved were too out of touch to realize the ignorant decisions they made. Just a minor example in the bigger picture.

A big part of Quake history was lost when Barrysworld was shut down, followed by Jolt leaving Clanbase the only real last standing provider of Quake3 leagues (QL now obviously).

I think my first experience in Clanbase was in 2002 with EK in the opencup, followed by a repeat in 2003 where we lost the final. Pleased to say that 9 years later EK took part in the Eurocup of QL where we made it out of the group stages at least once!

Anyway, would like to thank everyone involved with Clanbase for keeping it running all these years, good job.

I remember GGL hosting a tournament prior to 2007 in the USA with quite a prize money. I think Lauke won over Lotus in the UT finals and both never received their payment, so I dont really think that GGL ever tried to pay the players..
sad for clanbase though .. great memories there!

ClanBase was amazing site where I've met great friends and where I've worked with amazing people! Just seeing titles like this make me sad and how much time I've spend to fix conflicts, to help people and eventho I've sometimes whined and flamed about how much conflicts we have I wish that it comes back.

1.0 site or not, for me and probably for other users was easy to find everything they needed.

I started as cod2 admin,later became judge and then ladders assistent and all of it bc of my love for CoD2 and ClanBase. Now I don't think I'll be playing any more CoD2.

ClanBase was amazing site where I've met great friends and where I've worked with amazing people! Just seeing titles like this make me sad and how much time I've spend to fix conflicts, to help people and eventho I've sometimes whined and flamed about how much conflicts we have I wish that it comes back.

1.0 site or not, for me and probably for other users was easy to find everything they needed.

I started as cod2 admin,later became judge and then ladders assistent and all of it bc of my love for CoD2 and ClanBase. Now I don't think I'll be playing any more CoD2.

Sad to see it go, theres some deep history buried together with that site beeing disconnected. It gave birth to the most prestigious tournament, the EuroCup, where the best players in europe battle it out for the fame and glory, not the money.

A sad day for us, who spent lots of hours playing the ladders, cups and tournaments on clanbase, when it was a top-of-the-line gaming site.

After one year of playing q2 lithium I discovered clanbase in '99 and started to play normal DM. I remember the dutch ladder having about 150-200 clans. Those were the days...a childhood memory almost.

Been playing EC's and NC's there since 2000, I always loved the simplicity of the website. Clanbase EC was always *the* tournament for UT, it's a real shame that all those reports and games went down. Good thing there's archive.org for some nostalgia. When GGL came to play, I kinda saw this coming...

Thanks to everyone who put in time over the last years, we had a good run and it was hella fun.

Recently when I talked to some players of the LoL, DotA, WoW, Sc2 generation who haven't heard about CB. They made a good comparison imo. They asked themselves, what would happen to the competitive players if e.g. Blizzard shut down their servers completely - for ever.

"Their first bold move was trying to get adult banners on CB - a website that was home for thousands of teenagers. The Crew was shocked and appalled by this. Fortunately, we managed to get our voice through (by threatening to go on strike) - but we also lost several valuable crew members who had enough of the poor conditions and bad decisionmaking. "

yeah that pretty much sums up the heart of the problem and why in the end it was right to call it quits by the crew.

Goodbye clanbase, you will be remembered for your awesome contributions and not the stuff above and the rest of the usual tourney dramas (which happen anywhere anyway)

And much thanks for the scores of volunteers who kept things running over the years, great job!

Won't lie, never cared much for CB as such personally. But, now that it's gone, I can't help but feel a little bit of my gamer identity has gone with it. I mean, it was always there, you know? I was aware of it, and it was a part of the scene (a small part back when I first heard about it, then a HUGE part, then a nobody-treats-it-quite-seriously-now-but-still-nice-it-is-around part). It was always a part of the overall Quake package and now, just like that... fuck.

Times are changing, my friends. Damn, this got me feeling all nostalgic for the glory days. 1996-2003 got me some of the best gaming-related memories and got me through some of the most intense gaming-related experiences I will ever have.

I'd like to thank the CB staff and participants for being there for so long, for building up the wonderful legacy and persevering through all the shit. Cheers, guys and gals.

I started playing Q2 somewhere in 98. Ending up on CB was unavoidable in those days. It's funny to take a second and realize how much as changed under influence of subscriber lines and social media. I joined the CB crew in 99 and left after 6 years to focus on uni. Never really looked back since then and only just learned about the GGL debacle.

Somebody posted the EC3 odb movie. I remember those Eurocup weekends. I prevented [u]nmatched from being kicked out of their apartment that weekend by soothing the owner. This is only a small event in a large set smeared out over several EC editions that adds up to great memories (and a scar :p).

Here's the crew picture for EC3:

and EC2 while I'm at it since it's the very first edition I attended:.

I have learned a lot from working with a dynamic group of people. Willem and Rob were great leaders back in the days. Somewhat saddened to see CB has fallen.

what da f*ck?
I spent years of my teenage life on Clanbase, be it ladders and cups for MoH:AA, forums, articles and so on... a great shame also that all its history has been erased with it, it was kinda cool sometimes to check some of the old cups reports and videos...